Thursday, 30 December 2010

Winter Beaches

It has been so cold and frozen for the past weeks there was no chance to beach comb.   We did go one day unintentionally.   We were looking for the ponies in the hills and saw them down near the beach.  The road is narrow and steep - so treacherous in the icy, snowed under conditions and it was close to winter sunset.

We took the path to the beach with the feed buckets in hand and traipsed across the snow covered beach.  From lying many days the snow had turned to thick uneven ice and it hardly crunched under our feet.

There were a few dead seals and seal pups washed up on the beach- must be the bad weather :(

The day was calm though freezing and the light was amazing.  Will try to upload photos soon.

Unfort we had to climb up the dunes and over the barbedwire fence to the hill grazing.  We went up the mountain and it seemed ok. We called the ponies and they came as we reached the top but the conditions were against us and we slipped on the ice near the top and slid down for many meters.  Sprained wrists, ankles and bruises all over and all feed spilled :(  We limped back to the car.  Not nice.

Luckily it thawed during a Boxing Day gale.   Not a flake of snow left anywhere.  Thank goodness - it lasted too long and was too cold for too long.  Ponies are fine now and grazing happily, pleased to see the grass again.

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